‘Resistance 3’ Box Art Suggests Sony Introducing PSN Pass

It looks like Sony is following the suit of THQ, EA, and select titles by offering an online pass to access content for their upcoming release Resistance 3. Revealed via the title’s box art, this ‘PSN Pass’ supposedly gives players who can access the PSN store extra content.

Whether or not this bonus content is of the same ilk as EA’s Online Pass (read: prevents you from partaking in multiplayer) or if it is simply a chance to get first dibs on bonus maps, weapons, etc… for Resistance 3 is unknown at this point.

More importantly, this PSN Pass — with its specifically Sony branding — could be signs of more to come. Some titles like this year’s L.A. Noire have enjoyed success by offering access to premium content via first purchasing a reasonably priced pass, and perhaps that is what Sony is trying to establish here.

Or, considering they are already not scoring high in the security department, this PSN Pass is the beginning of a bigger fight against piracy. Of course the PSN Pass will also discourage gamers who rent, but it’s worked, to some degree, for EA so why not Sony as well?

If this is in fact a sign of things to come, then Sony may be in for even more backlash than they felt from the PSN outage. Okay maybe not that much backlash, but still a reasonable amount.

Denying all potential players of a game certain content is a risky proposition especially for a publisher with as wide an influence as Sony. It’s one thing for Electronic Arts to create the online pass, but if Sony were to feature PSN Pass on all of their titles that could really change the landscape of marketing video games.

Also, it’s worth nothing that this box art comes by way of a foreign message board, which might mean that the PSN Pass isn’t coming to domestic copies of Resistance 3. We’ll know more when the game releases later this year.

What do you hope this PSN Pass actually is? Do you think that if Sony introduced something like the EA’s Online Pass that it would have a big impact on video games?